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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27815698">second drafts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level'>sea_level</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Internal Conflict, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV First Person, POV Nick Carraway, Slightly Out of Order, Vague and sparse depictions of what happened between nick and mr mckee, more nick/mckee centric, nick analyses his feelings + some other stuff basically</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:42:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27815698</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick deals with his developing feelings for Mr. McKee by doing what he does best: writing about it.</p><p>[Note! Written in first-person POV, as if Nick were trying to figure it all out by writing out his thoughts and feelings. This last part isn't super explicit in the text itself.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway/Mr. McKee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>second drafts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>always wanted to write about mckee, didn't think it would be like this, but here we are lol</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Some details remain lost to me, of course. Lost to the moment, never filed away properly, alcohol getting in the way of my long term memory. It's a pity, in some regards, but I think I'm all the better for it. If I had all the details well... Who knows where I'd be now. It's hard enough to sort out all of my feelings without them.</p><hr/><p>He was something else. Soft, maybe, save for his stubble. His hair was like silk, his hands soft all over, save the callouses characteristic of his work. He tied his hair back in a loose ponytail, though there was barely enough there to make it worthwhile. It seemed a little futile later when the ribbon fell off while he was moving on top of me, his hair falling down his face.</p><p>I'd wanted to touch his face then, gently, like he was something to be treasured. I'd pulled him down for a kiss instead. That much I remembered.</p><hr/><p>It's hard not to wonder with Jay. He's such a strange man, his past, his experiences, the sum of his life so different from my own. With Jay, so many things that once seemed impossible could instead enter the realm of possibility, but only in my mind, and only if I let them.</p><p>I'm the byproduct of a stricter world. Proper. Formal. Middle class, to some. Rich to the less fortunate. Borderline acceptable to the rest.</p><p>The expectations that were impressed upon me as a kid were those of kindness and propriety. I had to be a gentleman in a gentleman's world, but beneath that surface layer, things were more complex and less dependable. It wasn't quite so easy to just see the world in black and white.</p><p>Love, for instance, could be a beautiful, wonderful thing, though it wasn't always if what I was taught was to be believed. Like with anything else, there always had to be exceptions.</p><p>Did I love Jay Gatsby, or did I just find him compelling? Was my love acceptable, appropriate?</p><p>It seemed to me that the world Jay lived in was free of such complexities, but for me, even though I had left my family and our little church in Minnesota behind, I would always find myself inextricably bound by those lessons from my youth.</p><p>Mr. McKee, though, Chester. He was a man from my world, and, between us, it was painfully hard to forget.</p><hr/><p>It's hard to recall the exact details of that night. My uncharacteristic inebriation did its fair share of work occluding those details from my conscious mind. I have, perhaps, given the impression that I remain largely ignorant, but that is not the case. I remembered much from the original event and then more returned to me afterward, enough to piece together a somewhat coherent narrative.</p><p>I find myself unsure of what to do with this information. Such things are...not accepted by polite society, to put it mildly, but such things also demand their own space.</p><p>It was the strangest thing. Of everything that I could possibly regret, the part that I really, truly seemed to regret the most seemed to be that I hadn't stayed.</p><p>Mr. Chester McKee was a singular man. He was, perhaps, a little plain looking, but, oh, he was so much more beneath the surface. He was, under the right circumstances, a fascinating conversationalist, and an even better photographer. Lighting, composition, framing, unity, the man had an eye for it all.</p><p>I've always admired photographers. Chester, though, turned photography into something beyond just an art form. He was far from the first to do such a thing, but standing by his bed, looking through his portfolio, one could feel the magic in them.</p><p>I've often wondered, after the fact, if I should have admired his work as much as I did. Every time I think about it, though, I never seem to be able to answer the problem, my thoughts diverging into tangents, leaving the original question behind. Were his photographs interesting because he was interesting? Or vice versa—were they so magnificent that they'd managed to influence my understanding of Chester himself? What made a photograph good? Did his photos conform to that? Were photographs meant to be viewed holistically with the photographer in mind, or were they best assessed standalone?</p><p>Was Chester himself an art, if I could gain the same aesthetic appreciation from the experience of <em>him</em> as I could with his photos? What did it mean if my stomach flipped thinking of him? What did it mean if my hands itched to touch him again? Was that art? Is it art now that I've written it down?</p><p>He'd called his marriage an arrangement before he'd pressed his lips to mine, his hands already going for my belt. He was well-practiced. That much I could tell from the certainty and confidence in his eyes and the way that he navigated me as if I were more familiar than foreign.</p><p>From this alone, I could reasonably assume that Chester was not a man who would have the same...weakness of the heart as I seem to have.</p><p>It's not a thought I like to humor, but there are times when I can make my peace with it.</p><hr/><p>I'm not sure if I should be writing about this, but I feel if I don't get my thoughts out onto paper somewhere, then surely I'll go mad.</p><p>I've waited months now, though that was probably too long. Finer details tend to take their own liberties if you let them.</p><hr/><p>So it might not be appropriate, per se, but it felt right. His skin on mine, his taste on my tongue, just being in his bed. There was something about it that was oddly reminiscent of belonging, and it felt so incredibly odd that there were people who would begrudge me that.</p><p>It came to me later that it was not just <em>people</em> but instead <em>most people.</em></p><p>Other days, I can't help but wonder if I'm among them.</p><hr/><p>I shouldn't speak about it, really. Just writing all this down here is a risk on its own. Here, the housekeeper can see it, if she particularly cares to look. How much security can one find in a closed book?</p><p>Sure, it may be more secure than the loose leaves of paper I have scattered around my desk for work, but not more. Never more.</p><hr/><p>"Beauty and the Beast," he says and flips to the next photograph. "Loneliness. Old Grocery Horse. Brook'n Bridge."</p><p>This I remember most of all, at least in this particular moment.</p><p>Perhaps it is the particular mixture of appreciation and sadness. Our time together was coming to a close. I didn't want it to.</p><p>Chester had woken something up inside of me, but it seemed to be keyed to him and him alone.</p><p>I've considered calling him. I've thought about telling him—</p><hr/><p>Gatsby is, perhaps, brighter than any of the stars in the sky. Just looking at him smile has this way of setting my mind at ease, like I'm audience to some celestial being with the power to put my life back on track.</p><p>It's not true, though, and it never was. Gatsby is a <em>the</em> tumultuous force in my life. In his presence, I feel like I want to shed myself of me, to throw away the real world, just so I can join him.</p><p>I want, and it's terrifying.</p><p>I want, and no one can ever, ever know.</p><hr/><p>I've never been a particularly religious man, not before the war and especially not after. Now, though, the crucifix on my dresser casts its silent judgment down on me.</p><p>I'll never experience the same serenity I felt as a kid, hands clasped together, kneeling down in front of the altar.</p><p>Maybe if I were wired differently, a higher power <em>would</em> be able to save me from myself, but as it stands...</p><hr/><p>Chester calls me, arranges an outing at a small restaurant in the city. When I arrive, he greets me like a friend.</p><p>"Mr. Carraway," he says pleasantly, </p><p>"Mr. McKee," I reply, taking his hand and shaking it.</p><p>"Thanks for agreeing to meet," he continues, pulling out a chair so he can sit. There's a small, pleased smiles on his lips. I drag my eyes away.</p><p>"Thank you for suggesting it," I say. "It's nice to see you again."</p><p>A waiter comes by with the menus and places them both in front of Chester. He smiles graciously at her before passing one over to me.</p><p>"You look like you're doing well," he comments.</p><p>"I am," I agree, despite the fact that I really could be doing a lot better.</p><p>We talk for a while, exchange inanities. Checking in on the others' families, discussing the weather, asking after the other's business. I feel odd, like I'm missing something. Being in his presence again is distracting, but I'm certain I'd expected something different, if not <em>more</em> when I'd arrived.</p><p>He orders small and eats fast and is done with his meal before I'm halfway done with mine. He waives down the waiter and pays his portion of the bill, leaving his business card in my hands with the address of his apartment written on the back.</p><p>He tells me to drop by sometime, that his Friday nights are free, and that he'd love to have me over.</p><p>I spend so much time staring at the card the following week, pulling it out of my wallet and tucking it back in, that I've already worn the edges down by the time the week rolls around and Friday arrives.</p><p> </p><p>"Brooklyn Bridge," he says, and I observe it. It's regal in black and white, details etched starkly in the mid-morning light. It's hard to pull my eyes away, the lines of the bridge pulling my attention back into it.</p><p>"It's beautiful," I say.</p><p>Chester's smile is soft, almost shy.</p><p>My heart aches. This is the easiest to forget.</p><p> </p><p>His hands are warm, and when he runs them down my sides, it feels like they're leaving a trail of fire in their wake. It's almost too much, all the sensations running together muddled in my head.</p><p>He presses his tongue into the hollow of my throat the same moment that he reaches down into the space between us. It's hard not to jerk up, to gasp, and I find myself conflicted over whether I should pull him closer or if I should bring his lips back up to meet mine.</p><p>It feels like something that's been years in the making, even though I've just met him, even though I've had my fair share of transgressions overseas.</p><p>It's too much really, the dam too impossibly full to burst. Sometimes I wonder if this is the reason why my memories of that night have been so elusive, but such strange suppositions have never carried enough logic to make sense.</p><hr/><p>He leans across the bed, over the place where I was laying just moments ago, and pulls out his portfolio from where it was leaning against the bedside table.</p><p>"Here," he says, taking the photos out and flipping through them. "Look. The Brooklyn Bridge."</p><p>I'm suddenly reminded that I'd come to his room in the first place to look at pictures such as this.</p><p>I look over his shoulder as he shows me his photos. They're beautiful. Chester picked his career well. He's got a wonderful eye for composition. Yet. I find my attention drawn to the way his just-long-enough hair curls behind his ears, how gentle and lively his eyes are. There's just something about <em>him</em> that makes me want to take his portfolio out of his hands and kiss him.</p><p>It's uncharacteristic. Unexpected.</p><p>In that moment, I'm not sure what to do, and in the end I'm not sure that I do much of anything.</p><p>I don't remember getting dressed or leaving or what I even say to him. I don't remember the trip down to the train station nor the strangers I must have passed on the sidewalk on the way there.</p><p>All I remember, really, is the cold stone bench pressing into my back as I sat in Pennsylvania Station waiting for my train to arrive. That and nothing more.</p><hr/><p>The light from Gatsby's mansion illuminates my room at night. Refracted through glass, it hits the walls in irregular patterns that vanish completely if I choose to pull the blinds closed. Most nights I do, preferring the darkness, but tonight, I can't help but enjoy the show.</p><p>My mind isn't often quiet, but here and now, watching the shards of light drift across my ceiling, the uproar calms for a while. There will be things to worry about when I wake up tomorrow, but, here and now, I can cut myself lose and drift out to sea.</p><p>It's a reminder, in a way, to count my blessings, strange as they may be.</p><hr/><p>It's hard to explain the way I felt about Chester McKee. Love would be...too simple and yet too open to interpretation at the same time. In the traditional sense, I did not love him.</p><p>Still, he had this allure, this pull. His gravity tugged on my heart and my mind, and yet I find myself unable to explain it. Mr. McKee was not, for all intents and purposes, a notable man. On some level, there had to be many others like him in New York.</p><p>And yet here I was, longing to be in his bed again. His and no one else's.</p><p>I wonder if I might think differently of all this if my interest in him had simply been purely physical. The transgressions expounded upon me in my youth would remove the complexity of the whole ordeal in favor of a simple condemnation.</p><p>Yet they never quite detailed this particular set of compulsions.</p><p>I wanted to go out for meals with him, wanted to hear his stories, admire his photographs. I wanted to sit in silence with him at a show, wanted to marvel at the concept of casual touch between us.</p><p>I wanted to wipe that shaving cream from his face and then press a kiss to his forehead. In private. In polite company.</p><p>In some ways, you could say, I wanted him.</p><p>Rereading what I've written, I've come to see it potentially interpreted in two ways.</p><p>One is that of a desire for profound friendship.</p><p>The other is much more condemnable.</p><p>I do, perhaps, spend too much time thinking about what the priests back home would think of these things, lapsed as I am.</p><p>Here in New York, I feel like the last surviving member of the old world with all my careful considerations and moral suppositions. I cling to them, desperately, for reasons I'm not fully sure I understand. Would it be liberating to let go?</p><p>The city itches for it, that wild fervor. It has this near aphrodaic allure, and, like any mortal man, I find myself compelled. I cannot lose myself in it, though. The creeping shame follows me like some omniscient specter.</p><p>Under that beating heart of the city, however, I found something else in myself. Something soft and gentle and yearning.</p><p>I couldn't call it love, not yet anyway. Maybe I just don't have the language.</p><p>Sins of the flesh are one thing, but what are sins of the heart?</p><hr/><p>It's not hard to come to the conclusion that some things are better kept to myself.</p><hr/><p>I stand outside Chester's apartment door, hesitating for just a second too long before knocking. I can't remember the place well from the last time I was here, hurried as I was to get to...other matters. Still, though, it's one thing to grasp for the memory, and another altogether to stand in a place you know you've been to before and feel no sense of recognition in the slightest.</p><p>Maybe I should leave. I almost feel like I'm taking advantage.</p><p>"Nick!" The door opens quickly, and Chester is standing there, looking much more delighted than he'd been at the restaurant.</p><p>"Chester," I reply with a smile. "I thought I'd pay you a visit." I hold up the business card he'd left me.</p><p>"Well, it's wonderful to see you," he says, stepping back to let me in. "Here," he gestures to the couch. "Take a seat."</p><p>I do.</p><p>"Can I get you anything to drink?" he asks over his shoulder on the way to the kitchen. "I don't have the biggest selection, but I do have a fine whiskey."</p><p>"It's alright," I say. "I'm starting to lose my taste for it."</p><p>"A good midwestern boy like you? I understand," he says. "The city's best experienced with both eyes open. You mind if I drink?"</p><p>"Not at all."</p><p>He hums and disappears into the other room. As a distraction, I take the moment to look around the apartment, to see if I can find any trace of Mrs. McKee, but the decor is shockingly impersonal. It's well designed, obviously with an artist's eye, so it takes me a moment to notice that, of all the picture frames in the room, none of them actually contain any people. The largest piece, above the fireplace, is a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge.</p><p>"Here we are," Chester says on his way back in. He's holding a glass with just a dash of liquor inside of it, not enough to get him drunk. He takes a sip and sets it down onto the coffee table.</p><p>I wish, for a second, that I had accepted his offer. I wipe my hands on my slacks, willing my nerves to calm. Maybe I'd been reading into things coming here, maybe I was assuming too much, maybe he just wants to be friends, maybe—</p><p>"Don't look so nervous," Chester says kindly. He loosens his tie a little and my eyes track the movement unbidden.</p><p>"Sorry," I apologize. "I'm just not used to this."</p><p>"Is anyone ever?" </p><p>He's standing right in front of me now, his legs almost touching mine. The heat between us becomes palpable, and I almost wish I'd taken off my outermost layer at the door.</p><p>"I suppose not," I reply.</p><p>He smiles softly and tilts my head up.</p><p>I meet him halfway.</p><hr/><p>"Look!" Jay exclaims as we drive past, "Brooklyn Bridge!" He's driving the car, but he lifts himself up a little to point at it, his arm extending out over my head.</p><p>It's strange to see him this excited over a landmark, but his joy is infectious. </p><p>I feel warm and tingly all over. With Jay at least, I can forget for a while that I'm probably not supposed to.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>as always lmk if i have any technical mistakes! ty for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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